Mississippi governor signs school prayer bill

Mississippi governor signs school prayer bill

Last Thursday, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed HB 638, a
bill requiring public schools to develop policies allowing students to
pray over school intercoms, at assemblies, and at sporting events.

“This is an overt act of hostility against minority religious
beliefs and atheists, disguised as religious freedom,” said David
Silverman, President of American Atheists. “This is not religious
freedom; it’s open and proud bigotry, and the people of Mississippi
should be ashamed of their legislature and governor.”

American Atheists’ founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair started her
fight for the separation of church and state with a lawsuit about the
issue of prayer in public schools. She started American Atheists soon
after in 1963. It remains American Atheists’ position that students,
faculty, and staff should not be forced to listen to prayer.

My god. Is there not a lawyer in Mississippi who can read? The courts have consistently struck down this type of law for over 50 years.

I think a lot of the motivation for this trash is political. The legislators who supported this anti-constitutional lunacy gain credibility among their constituents because they have “fought the good fight” or “made a statement”, even though some of them must be aware that it will take a court about 15 seconds to strike the law down. This makes them grotesquely cynical and duplicitous, but hey, they are Christians, aren’t they?

There really needs to be a safeguard against this kind of legislation before it passes. The constitution shouldn’t have to be defended after it’s already been attacked.

It has been one of my contentions that the jeebus meme in American society has become a nightmare of Frankenstinian proportions.

I am also fairly sure that there is not quite as many committed to the fairy story as the theists would have everyone else believe.

Where the theists kinda win is in the fact that even though a significant percentage do not particularly believe in the nonsense, they say they do, and pretend that it defines who they are, simply because xtian religiosity is the scale and the premise on which the society has been manoeuvred into judging others by.

Belief in the story is not as important as presenting the image that one does.

To that end or rather pandering to that meme politics media and certainly religion exacerbates and exaggerates the artificially invented ‘yardstick’ to such an extent that to gain votes you have lie and for the most part pretend that xtian religion is the be all and end all of society.

That is the currency that religion itself encourages with enthusiasm because it is a win win for their scam, I am positive that they must not be able to believe their luck.

Fear of being discovered as someone that is untrustworthy or immoral or evil or anything the theists love to claim does the rest. and for business, politics, community, the only safe option has been to be one of the herded sheeple and keep the head down.

I think it is changing, the poll figures on attitudes and beliefs seem to suggest quite strongly that the tide is turning, it will be a while before the back of this nightmare is broken but it will be and the spectacle of an openly atheist politician canvassing for votes on that pledge and position will one day be just another everyday occurrence.

Why don’t some students use this law to offer Hindu, Moslem, etc. prayers over the intercom? That could lead pretty quickly to a court challenge if they are denied that opportunity . . . religious freedom issues, etc.

“”This is not religious freedom; it’s open and proud bigotry, and the people of Mississippi should be ashamed of their legislature and governor.””

Unfortuately their are people in Mississippi who are probably proud of their daft Governor for this bill. If it is finally signed into an actual law then I’m sure there will be ‘duelling banjos’ playing everywhere. I suspect that the fundementalist Christians who will gleefully support this bill probably don’t really recognise the US constitution as a source of law and hence don’t believe the constitution counts (they probably think the constitution is a Northern plot to take over the South). They only believe in the so called God’s laws as their only legitimate source of law which is just like the Muslim fundementalists and Taleban who only believe in Sharia – which are also God’s’ laws. The Christians just want their own brand of God’s laws which would actually be remarkably similar to Sharia if they had their way (no surprise really since the Koran is just a plagarised re-write of the Old Testiment in Arabic with a bit more death to apostates added for good measure).